Again in 2013 Daniel Kretínský, owner among other things of Sparta, and Patrik Tkác, number one of the J & T Group accomplished another big operation buying Ringier Axel Springer CZ, the Czech of the Swiss-German editorial group. So they secured the ownership of newspaper “Blesk” (tabloid the most widely read) and the weekly “Reflex”.

It seems clear enough that the focus is now centred on private and commercial television with TV Nova and Prima, on first place. Together, the two broadcasting stations control 90% of TV advertising market. Nova ins owner by American Time Warner and Prima is fifty fifty shared by Swedish Mgt and Czech company Ges.

At the end, the list of suitors who wish to acquire the most popular private TV is very long and it is a perfect example of how Czech media is a market that worth billions despite the present crisis because of its generated under estimation Kc60bn a year.

The new owners, whose is aim is improving their influential power that media provide, are increasingly such a kind of takeovers not specialists in publishing. Ignoring the fact of a growing local oligarchy, the very questioned Reporters Without Borders placed the country in 16th position out of the 179 countries in the list freedom of the press, ranking published in 2013.

Later still in 2013 billionaire Andrej Babis (Czech Finance Minister and ANO movement head), who is President of the agricultural, food and chemical Agrofert group, bought the company Mafra editing daily “Mladá Fronta Dnes” and “Lidové Noviny” with site iDnes.cz. The entire stake was sold to him by the German company Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft. Impuls Radio the most popular radio in the country got the same destiny soon later.

Actually Babis remained the most influential person in Czech Republic in 2014 also according to the ranking elaborated by Forbes. According to the first estimates, Mafra raised operating profit EBITDA on the year to Kc270m last year. Together with Babis’s other media, Radio Impuls and Slovak publisher Ecopress, Mafra generated sales of Kc3,4bn in 2014.

The fact is that by chance (or not) Babis the Slovakian-born tycoon was an outsider to politics around twelve months ago.

(Adapted from a report of the magazine RC Repubblica Ceca, July – August 2014)

A quite significant change of trend after a long, flat period in the Czech media panorama is emerging. And of course the process is far from being over. Foreign companies are leaving room for new local owners.

“Andrej Babiš 2014” by David Sedlecký – Own work.

A first example: back to 2008, the billionaire Zdenek Bakala bought the publishing house Economia (German company Handelsblatt) editing “Hospodárské Respekt” daily newspaper and the weekly “Respekt” and “Ekonom” and also the informative website Ihned.cz. In 2013 acquired Centrum Holdings (Aktualne.cz) from the American fund Warburg Pincus.